DURBAN, South Africa — International climate change talks emerged from a standoff Sunday, as a Europe-led alliance of countries used a weakened Kyoto Protocol as a bargaining chip to get the rest of the parties to accept a mandate for a comprehensive successor regime.

“We came here with plan A and we concluded with this plan A to save one planet earth for the future of our children and grandchildren,” said Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s minister of international relations and cooperation, who chaired the conference.

Countries also agreed to make a multibillion-dollar green-climate fund operational to help developing nations cope with the impacts of global warming, but would still have to build sources for its funding.

“We know when you have a very big problem, when you have a global problem, an international problem, then voluntary means will not be enough to address that problem,” said European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard in the midst of the marathon, record-breaking United Nations negotiating session.

“We have seen that many times in history — I could mention the Cold War, I could also take the present economic crisis . . . that government structure is of very big importance. It is necessary in order to get the necessary done.”

The Europe-led block, including small-island states and the least-developed nations, had urged the conference to require a binding protocol or legal instrument, to be negotiated within four years and taking effect in 2018.

But they rejected adding a third choice that would allow countries instead to choose another “legal option” in the future to address global warming – an option they believed would be too weak to be binding.

Both China and India, the world’s first and third largest annual sources of greenhouse gases, were skeptical, suggesting that industrialized countries, which have historically produced more than half of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, were trying to avoid paying their fair share.

But the countries later brokered a compromise to toughen the wording an ensure that the eventual solution would have legal force but fall under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was founded based on the principle that developed nations should pay for their historic emissions that remain in the atmosphere.

The marathon session was supposed to wrap up on Friday, but instead ended Sunday morning as the longest UN climate summit in 20 years.

Moments before reaching the compromise, Indian Minister Jayanthi Natarajan said her country had made several concessions through the negotiations including accepting the possibility of a legally-binding instrument or protocol, but she questioned whether countries were trying to make India a scapegoat for talks collapsing.

“I’m only wondering if there’s an effort here to shift the burden of this entire climate change problem upon countries who have not (co-operated) to nations who have not contributed to this problem and that is wrong,” she said, before the proposal was modified.

China’s lead negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, stressed that his country took legally-binding agreements seriously and was prepared to honour its commitments. But he questioned why the developed nations were not able to do the same under the Kyoto Protocol.

“We developing countries, will be very serious in our implementation of these documents,” said Xie, speaking through a translator. “We are taking actions (and) we want to see your real actions.”

Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy on climate change, had also said he was comfortable with the original wording that provided the non-binding option, but did not immediately say whether he agreed with the new proposal.

Canada, Russia and Japan have all refused to take on a second round of commitments under Kyoto, the existing-legally binding treaty, after its existing commitments expire in 2013.

The nations were also slated to continue negotiating the length of the next commitment period of the Kyoto agreement at a conference next year.

The United States are a member of the framework convention, but never ratified the Kyoto agreement.